Museum Storage and Space Planning

Whether you are a large museum or a small historical society, your goal is to preserve and protect the objects entrusted to your care, and our goal is to help. Your collections are one of a kind and historically significant, and proper storage for these collections is imperative for so many reasons. We help institutions of all sizes manage risk, attract more community members, optimize space, and stay within budget.

Managing Your Risk

Being aware of what can cause harm to your collections, and how to prevent them, is an important step in choosing your storage solutions. We want to help you manage risk by bringing these ten agents of deterioration to your attention. With the proper storage solution you can better protect priceless collections and avoid these harmful incidents:

Community Engagement

Museums are seeking new ways to engage with their communities, and creative solutions for visible storage are being used to simultaneously store items as well as display them in a unique way to the public. We work with architects and designers, as well as our in-house design team, to create systems that promote engagement while still maintaining the highest standards in collections care.

Storage and Space Planning

Big or small, your institution is more than likely running out of storage space. High-density storage systems, sometimes called “compactors,” eliminate empty aisle space by mounting shelving or cabinets on carriages that move along rails. These highly efficient systems help save space in your facility, and can even double your storage capacity. Our in-house design team will help you design a system that works specifically to fit your collection and work flow. What’s the best part? A lot of the time we are able to utilize existing cabinets and shelving as long as they are in good shape, which allows you to use your existing storage in a more space efficient way.

Repurposing Your Equipment

The above image came from a Natural History Museum that outgrew its collections space. In order to maintain proper conditions for collections they invested in a $65 million collections resource center that was fit to house over 2 million items. Through utilizing their local storage expert they were able to use an existing 15,000 shelves and 250 cabinets on a total of 274 moveable carriages.

Not in the budget right now?

We help institutions large and small make the best use of their space and their budget. While our products are not cheap, many of our clients find that our free space planning services, our ability to help you repurpose, and our attention to detail end up saving precious funds in the long run. It’s important to get a local storage expert involved in the early planning stage to ensure the best result.

Part of the space planning process involves projecting future growth, even if funding is unavailable at the time of renovation or construction. Sometimes, for instance, rails for high-density systems are installed during construction and carriages are added years later, when collections have grown and more funding is available. The Columbia River Maritime Museum pursued a similar strategy, installing a rail system that could support full-height shelving but installing shorter shelving that should be able to accommodate the museum’s growing collection for the next 20 years (see above image). The museum is planning to invest in taller shelves at that time and installing it on the existing rails.

Storage for Every Collection

Part of being a fully equipped museum storage provider means providing a vast array of solutions that can cater to any collection need. We offer solutions such as art racks (both stationary and mobile), drawers of any dimension to help you protect small items, cabinets that keep out all agents of deterioration, temperature controlled storage, and high density solutions that save you premium space.

0913.ASU Meteorite Vault059. Photo by Andy DeLisle

Download our Museum Collections Guide to learn more:

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